Trump rallies... yikes.

[tinselwolverine]

What's simply not true is your taxes will only go up by 2.2%.

The wife and I were driving back from the gym...and we started talking about how screwed up healthcare is; how much the premiums and the co-pays and the deductibles are, and she asked me..."why didn't they just do it? Why didn't they just go to the single payer thing?"


And it's and interesting question.

Jilly Barberie was talking about this news report about the happiest countries in the world.

One of her points was that they had universal healthcare.

None of them are like, an enemy of ours.

For years, the gap in our health system, in my opinion, is that - and I've expressed this numerous times - was that someone who had a pre-existing condition and couldn't get medical insurance - someone who had done everything right; had worked, bought a house, started savings and so forth - would have to go broke to qualify for the socialized medical care that we've had for years anyway.

Obamacare addressed that.

But that was a tourniquet on a paper cut.

Instead, Obamacare, generally, went in and fucked everything else up.

Rather than enumerating everything else Obamacare fucked up, I'll address responses.

So I guess the question is - do we just go with Universal Healthcare - like much of the rest of the world has (in case anybody doesn't know, anybody who can afford private insurance in a country with universal health care can get it)?

Or do we just reject Obamacare and make actual accesses to people who want insurance who did everything right and had pre-existing conditions through no fault of their own?

Because one of the two has got to be done; we can't afford the horseshit costs that Obamacare is racking up, and, also, as a moral society, we can't let deserving people who have done everything right lose everything just because they get sick.

 

[Gulo Blue]

So I guess the question is - do we just go with Universal Healthcare - like much of the rest of the world has (in case anybody doesn't know, anybody who can afford private insurance in a country with universal health care can get it)?

Thanks to our highly partisan state of government, this is how the question is framed, yes or no on universal healthcare. But it does have to be like that. We could have limited universal healthcare that only covers the things we can afford to cover (leaving a market for insurance to cover everything else.). In an extreme example, what if we had universal healthcare that covered everyone, but it only covered flu shots? We could obviously afford that and it would be in the public interest to do it. You can go from there to envision a universal healthcare system as big or as small as you like.

Due to the advanced technological state of our healthcare industry where we often have newer, more expensive practices available than elsewhere, I think it makes sense for us to have an extra, private tier, beyond what universal healthcare covers, left for private insurance. And it would be substantial.

 

[byco42]

There's nothing socialist about Obamacare. It's primarily a law that says everybody has to buy insurance from private companies. How people interpret that primarily in terms of socialist vs. capitalist is beyond me.

More draconian, actually. Completely in contradistinction to freedom or liberty. My "fine" for not having insurance would have been $1,300, if I did not already have employer-provided insurance.

 

[tinselwolverine]

More draconian, actually. Completely in contradistinction to freedom or liberty. My "fine" for not having insurance would have been $1,300, if I did not already have employer-provided insurance.

"Contradistinction" might actually be the most awesomest word I have ever known anyone to have used in the written...uh...word...I guess.

 

[tomdalton22]

More draconian, actually. Completely in contradistinction to freedom or liberty. My "fine" for not having insurance would have been $1,300, if I did not already have employer-provided insurance.

From what I have read, for tax year 2015 the max "fine" is $975. For 2016 the max fine is $2,085.

the actual amount of fine doesn't really matter, I agree with your post.

 

[Spartan23MSU]

From what I have read, for tax year 2015 the max "fine" is $975. For 2016 the max fine is $2,085.

the actual amount of fine doesn't really matter, I agree with your post.

So it more than doubles in 1 year, that goes right along with inflation x 95. Makes total sense...

 

[Sbee]

More draconian, actually. Completely in contradistinction to freedom or liberty. My "fine" for not having insurance would have been $1,300, if I did not already have employer-provided insurance.

That's part of the deal unfortunately, the health care companies give in on pre existing conditions and a few other things and they get the gift of forcing people into buying some level of coverage. The problem with allowing people to go without coverage is that they will always get some level of help through the emergency room. if you could deny any services if you didn't have no coverage the market would work, but that's the caveat.

funny thing is that the mandate sounds more conservative to me, not having the rest of us pay for the freeloaders who don't have coverage through emergency room care. make them pay for the coverage they will always get

This plan was not even close to socialized medicine, the leftist plan was single payer, the compromise was a public option but Obama gave up on that early on. This public/private hybrid mirrors Romney's plan in Mass.

In general, I don't think the profit motive should be applied to sick and dying people but that's just me.

 

[Gulo Blue]

In general, I don't think the profit motive should be applied to sick and dying people but that's just me.

It's a big part of why our 1/20th of the world's population develops significantly more than our fair share of new medical technology. Not down playing the role of universities of course, but it wouldn't happen without the sky high profits.

 

[Michchamp]

I admit, I haven't really gotten into the weeds of healthcare law or anything like that, but I have a hard time understanding how/why the Affordable Care Act would by itself be responsible for premiums going up as much as they have. Nor do I understand why a tax increase, even a substantial one, would be less ideal than paying more than that in form of the already HUGE chunk of my income to Blue Cross Blue Shield every month for health insurance that still isn't that great.

so... the law requires more people to buy product X under penalty of law, in return for the producers of product X to subsidize product X for low income/poor customers who couldn't otherwise afford it. now if then # of people receiving the subsidy outweighs the number of paying customers, okay, but weren't most people > 60% of Americans still insured before it? yet premiums have gone up more dramatically than seems necessary.

In my own experience, my premiums had already been going up before the ACA passed, as my cheapass, shitty then-employer put more and more of the burden on employees, and cut their own contributions each year. the year after it passed they skyrocketed.

I think the ACA - a law which most people didnt read, just read a lot of very misleading and biased commentary of - simply gave corporate employers and health insurers cover to ratchet up the fucking of their customers to 11. these health insurers are already operating in a non-competitive environment in which they can throw up barriers to entry, buy favorable press, and such powerful lobbyists to essentially write favorable bills for themselves that are passed into law almost verbatim. so, yeah.

 

[Sbee]

It's a big part of why our 1/20th of the world's population develops significantly more than our fair share of new medical technology. Not down playing the role of universities of course, but it wouldn't happen without the sky high profits.

Good point, that's an angle I haven't thought of but my comments were directed more towards insurance companies that drug companies. I'm OK with profit in pharmaceuticals and equipment.

 

[Gulo Blue]

Good point, that's an angle I haven't thought of but my comments were directed more towards insurance companies that drug companies. I'm OK with profit in pharmaceuticals and equipment.

A lot of the cost of insurance is actually paid out to health care providers. I think, under ACA it has to be over 80%.

 

[tigermud]

TUCSON COP: ANTI-TRUMP PROTESTERS “MOST HATEFUL PEOPLE I’VE EVER SEEN”
"I could not believe what I saw"

http://www.infowars.com/tucson-cop-anti-trump-protesters-most-hateful-people-ive-ever-seen/

 

[Spartanmack]

Premiums are going up because the ACA is not real healthcare reform - it took a bad system and made it worse. I think it was by design - package a bullshit bill that makes it worse, call it reform and when it fails falsely claim that the free market didn't work (health insurance hasn't been a free market system in any of our lifetimes), reform didn't work so the only thing left is single payer. Of course, single payer will be expensive and ineffective and it will destroy the innovation that Gulo referred to in his post.

Even if I'm wrong and it wasn't designed to collapse on itself, at a minimum it was an attempt by special interests to satisfy minimal requirements (pre-existing conditions, etc) while rigging the system further in their favor. The law was written by insurance companies for the benefit of insurance companies. That's why their are new taxes on drug companies, device manufacturers and employers who provide "Cadillac Plans" but no new taxes on insurance companies - only requirements that everyone buy insurance. But they clearly underestimated how many people would opt to pay the fine rather than the more expensive premiums then just pay the premiums when they go from healthy to some sort of preexisting condition. So we have a law that's not resulting in more people having insurance, forcing people to buy products they don't need (why should a single guy in his 40s be forced to buy insurance that covers abortion or mammograms? why should a married couple with either partner "fixed" be forced to buy insurance that covers contraceptives or abortions? why should a woman buy insurance that covers prostate cancer or vasectomies? - one size fits all doesn't work) - basically not doing what it is designed to do, while driving costs higher and higher.

There are 3 things we need for real health care reform - 1) deregulate insurance to introduce real competition so consumers can shop for and companies can offer coverage across state lines 2) tort reform and 3) digitize medical records to eliminate duplicate procedures and other forms of waste.

None of this seems to have a prayer of happening without getting rid of special interests and lobbyists for insurance, providers and trial lawyers. Start with term limits and if you want something to regulate champ, regulate lobbyists.

 

[tigermud]

Bernie vs Trump, Who is more Violent (Social Experiment)

https://youtu.be/aeOkybuCXX0

 

[Gulo Blue]

Bernie vs Trump, Who is more Violent (Social Experiment)

https://youtu.be/aeOkybuCXX0

Misleading title. This is not an experiment properly designed to identify which group of supporters is more violent.